After discovering the coffee machine, life at work has been much better! Outside of work… life has been very much the same without any really notable occurrences… save for that everyone from VMware outside of India slowly trickled out over the day on Friday night into Saturday morning.
It’s odd how much you can enjoy traveling with someone, while I flew in alone Brian was there immediately to help schedule things, have breakfast at a certain time… meet the car at a certain time… a travel companion. I’ve traveled on my own before (and in foreign countries where I don’t speak the language all that well), but the ride from work felt different… breakfast was a lot quieter without someone here to talk to… and it’s hard to meet someone at breakfast here. All of that said, I was just getting used to the idea when I got a reply to an e-mail from Jacy, another coworker who is coming in today. We’re working different schedules, but he’s agreed that it would be fun to grab some lunch or dinner today… and the cycle continues anew!
Between the time on Friday that the guys left, and the time I woke up that afternoon, little happened other than an ill-fated attempt to switch back to a day shift schedule for Sunday. I slept until nearly 3:30 PM, and then got up thinking if I were to venture out to dinner I would feel better, more awake… go to sleep around 1:00 AM and be ready for Sunday morning! Dinner turned into a few drinks, and I headed back to the hotel around 6:00 feeling exhausted for reasons I can’t explain save for that work has been very busy this week. It didn’t take long, and I was asleep again, this time until midnight. From midnight until now I’ve just been reading my book, talking with a friend back in the US over Google Chat, using Skype to talk to my parents and say hello and Happy Mothers Day (tomorrow still for you guys!) and passing the hours slowly until breakfast here. A quick trip to the hotel lobby for breakfast, which was bigger than usual for me but I was very hungry after so little tangible food yesterday, and I’m up for the day!
No plans today, but if Jacy is up for it we may do some shopping. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with purchases here for the first time with my current bank. After one account shut-off in my previous business travel to cover a hotel stay… I had to sign a few waivers to ensure it would not happen again. I could travel the world, they said, and not worry about a thing. Well, my bank is just fine with it… but Visa is displeased, and after getting that straightened out I tripped the fraud branch of my bank due to transactions both in the US (online) for shipping a few things here, going to the ATM, and buying a few items locally. I think calls to my bank from India might be the largest personal expense I have on this trip. It really makes me appreciate the ease of traveler’s checks back when those were a thing people did when they traveled. Brian was very good to cover a few expenses for me, though, while I got it all sorted out. One more thing to keep in mind when traveling in India… it’s very likely your cards will get declined from time to time… according to the bank it’s a hot-spot for credit card fraud!
Shopping, a nice dinner… definitely some laundry… a pretty easy day today. tomorrow I spend trying again to switch back to a night schedule (assuming I stay awake all day today) and we’ll see how things go. Then it’s back to another week of work. This week my schedule changes to our Europe regions and I’m working 3:00 PM IST – 12:00 AM IST. I think this will work out, to some degree. It will feel a bit more like I’m not working overnight. We’ll see!
I took a picture of UB City today while I was out early, it’s one of the nearby business towers that supports the hotel and surrounding area. I heard from a coworker that the percentage of people who actually stay in Bangalore on the weekends is relatively low. It’s essentially a very large commuter town. There are so many houses I find this hard to believe, but India also has so many people in it overall that perhaps it’s reasonable that Bangalore houses as many people as it can… and there are just too many. More on this as I discover more about it!
UB City Tower… there is apparently a bike show today. I might check that out too!
Wait – Brian allowed you to charge your stuff to his card?
He did! He was very nice about it! Actually, I just used his card and no one was the wiser… though they did wonder why he got so much more handsome all of a sudden!